I hope to one day become an elementary school teacher and perhaps even work at a high school. I specifically want to work with students who qualify as "less fortunate." I went to a high school that had the reputation of "educating" a number of students involved in gang activity, drugs or promiscuous lifestyles. Of course, there were also a number of students who grew up in neighborhoods and even homes with promiscuity, drugs and gang activity but these students made the choice to NOT end up like their parents or their brothers and sisters and made something of themselves. They made the choice to join the music academy and despite its reputation as a bad school, the music program changed hundreds of thousands of lives - mine being one of them.
Because of the music academy, I DIDN'T drop out of high school. I got teased so much in school that it became too much for me and I would fake being sick, I would run fake fevers, I'd miss school for almost an entire week on purpose. Boys would purposely torment me which eventually led to me physically fighting with them, in order to defend myself. I went home crying almost every single night and the music program and more importantly, the students and staff involved in the music program kept me from dropping out of that school.
I'm extremely surprised that an educator such as this would stoop so low as to give $50 to each tip given (not each STUDENT, each tip that was provided to this woman). And what is even MORE appalling is the fact that EVERY BRIBE THAT WAS HANDED OUT CAME FROM SCHOOL FUNDING.
While I know the school was and is mostly consumed with gang members, bribing those said gang members in attempts to stop the gang activity was definitely the wrong way to go. Some people (as in a stupid person who I went to high school with and believes the police system in Chicago is responsible for the gang activity) might like to blame police officers for these problems but as I said to SOME PEOPLE, the police system in Chicago is not the problem here. The education is and has been a problem for some time now. If a PRINCIPAL who was once Vice Principal for YEARS is going around handing out bribes to students, what kind of example is being set here? How are students who trusted this woman supposed to feel? And more importantly, how are educators going to get their students to trust them? As a future educator, how am I going to convince students that I have their good intentions at heart when this woman chose to take the easy and WRONG way out by bribing students to get information out of them? Because of this woman, I'm sure that a number of parents will be pulling their children out of public schools because guess where those $50 tips came from? My parents' pockets and your parents' pockets. That is, if your parents pay their taxes.
I know that my mother and father did not pay for me to go to school and make nothing of myself. My parents also did not pay money so that this woman could use it to pay for anonymous gang members' guns/drugs/knives/what have you.
I should mention that I did have a good relationship with this woman and respected her a lot as an educator and was shocked when I passed my high school and discovered that she had been replaced by a new principal after five short years. She did everything in her power to attempt to help me graduate on time and after I graduated, I frequently came back to visit my high school and I received a hall pass which allowed me to visit any of my old teachers that day (this never happens because security is really tight...supposedly).
ALSO, I later discovered that soon after she became principal a number of teachers lost their jobs and didn't know why. And I always found that some of the best and most giving teachers were the ones who were getting the boot. I can't say whether or not these teachers were given the "peace out homie" because they saw through her lies and deceit because hey, what do I know?
I also must say that I find it an extremely poor excuse for students to get involved in gang activity or drug addiction just because that's the kind of environment they were brought up in. You would think that you would use your relatives or friends as examples of what NOT to do but I guess not all of us have the same will power.
I know that when I start teaching, I'm not gonna have any of this. There will be no fights in my classroom, no threats made against me and certainly no bribes being given out just to find out who's doing what. It will be my job as an educator to ensure the safety of my students AND their education. I will only use this to fight harder against people like this woman and kids who think it's okay to go and join gangs and end up in jail. They may hate me at first but I will show them that success can take you on a long and powerful journey of empowerment. And in order to achieve that kind of mentality, they will need a teacher to help them prepare for high school and prepare for those pressures that other students will put on them.
I may not be able to save the world but I can make my attempt to save 20 or 30 kids a year and hopefully within those 20 - 30 kids, a small percentage of them will choose not to indulge and will choose not to fall victim to peer pressure.
Here is the article on the woman who did this. http://cbs2chicago.com/local/schurz.gangs.principal.2.1878696.html
That's all folks.
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